Now I'm an absolute slut for poetry stories, I can't say they're all good but I can definitely tell you that there is one out there I am there and I am reading it. I will say that this book did not need that format. That format is for more happening and a lot more action or at least a lot more emotions than this book was pulling.

I want to say that I give much props and many kudos to the author for doing their research. This is probably going to be the main nice thing I say they did their research they understand this they portrayed this pretty well.

Now as for the book, the story is pretty slow I had to stop and take a break from it multiple times because I just couldn't get into it, see my complaint about the poetry format above. But there is a lot more to this, Grace and Tippi are just not interesting characters, you have one twin who's very outspoken and opinionated and the other one that sort of exist but we're mostly in her head. These are just concepts on paper these are not characters, they were not fleshed out very well. I was more interested in the HIV friend they had who got HIV from their mother's breast milk that I was and how they happened or anything of the sort. How they happened and nothing was done about it was never really addressed, they didn't think to do a surgery earlier on they didn't ever mention one of them's health was failing, there's a lot of things that really don't happen. D o n t happen.

And it's what doesn't happen in the book that probably weighs it down the hardest. We have for example, Tippi has a crush on a guy, by the end of the book we don't even know if the guy has a crush on her, or if he's just being nice, or what's going on. We have nothing in that area and I feel like we really needed something. It would have grounded the relationship a little bit more to know if it was or wasn't. Instead it's left open to interpretation like everything else just about.

Now as for the ending that everybody is talking about, this ending comes out of nowhere. We've got multiple pages where they reassure us that everything should go fine and that everything is accounted for and they have predicted everything that could go wrong. They call an experts they call in doctors who have done this before. Yet somehow it ends with the most opposite of what they predicted happening. And I feel like that's kind of a cop-out. Well yes it's unrealistic for both twins to survive normally, I felt like this ending was very brutal and very sudden.

It's reads like it wanted to be My Sister's Keeper. My Sister's Keeper had a lot of impact and build up to the death, which depending on which media you read who dies is entirely varied. But either ending is the right ending if you break it down. Because one ending of My Sister's Keeper has the sister who has been used as an organ donor and tortured her whole life die and her organs go to her sick sister, in a way living after all those trials and after all of those experiments the torture the pain of being betrayed by your own family, that's its own hell. In another the sick sister who has been suffering her whole life and having to watch her other sister be used as an organ and bone marrow cow basically, dies in the end. The other sister is sad but life goes on, in a way that means that the other sister isn't suffering her horrible pain the rest of her life. Both of these endings have a conclusion that's bittersweet.

In that way I can say at the end of My Sister's Keeper no matter who dies they won't be suffering. But One led us to believe that neither one of these two were suffering, they were both happy, they were both full of life, they had things to do, a life to live. And then it wraps up the ending the way it does which feels like it goes yeah they both have all these ambitions, let's just smear mud all over that.

I understand the rarity of conjoined twins, I understand that surgery is all up in the air, but boy that they sound ready for anything and boy did this ending feel disappointing.

But I'm not going to give it a low rating, it's a fairly decent book, I wouldn't say it's a great book, but the message on the last page is beautiful and for the last page alone it saves itself from being a low rating. But I definitely think that that ending was kind of a cop out in many ways. It was very much leading us astray with all these assurances of the best doctors and everything and then having it all go horribly wrong.

But what I recommend it? Not really, but it's decent enough that you should read it. But if sad stories basically being hurt no comfort and poetry style stories aren't your thing? Then I definitely would not recommend this for you. There are better poetry style stories out there to read and get into this genre with. ( )

I love poetry and especially stories told in verse. Sarah Crossan pulls this off beautifully here in this case. 'One' is about the relationship between conjoined twins Tippi and Grace and set in the contemporary United States. Use of verse allows the author more emotional scope as she shines a light on all aspects of the twins shared existence. Tight use of language gets to the heart of things and left this reader feeling as if I had experienced it all with them. Isn't that how a good book should be? ( )

One of the best books I have read this year. Beautiful, engaging, heartbreaking
( )

Grace and Tippi are twins and have spent their entire lives by each other's side because they are not just twins, they are conjoined twins. Although their upper bodies are separate, their lower bodies are not; joined at the waist. It makes a lot of their life not impossible but harder than for, say, their younger sister. For that reason, it's always been Grace and Tippi. Especially as they have been homeschooled all their lives; inbetween all the hospital visits. But at sixteen, Grace and Tippi are defying all odds and show no signs of stopping. Why would they?

But when their family struggles with money, homeschooling disappears as an option and the girls are forced to attend public school. It feels like a nightmare, one they can't avoid. At least until they meet Yasmeen and her friend Jon during their first day of school; a friend couple who quickly adopts the girls into their little crew. They learn that perhaps there's more than just the two of them but Grace and Tippi, Tippi and Grace becomes even more important when Grace's health declines and they're quickly running out of options...

This book was so... wow. It is powerful, emotional, beautiful and absolutely fantastic. It completely caught me off guard, and I fell a lot harder than I thought I would, right from the start. Both Grace and Tippi are so lovely and frustrating at the same time; they're so raw and human and it's hard not to care for them both. They have very distinct personalities which the other characters do as well but they don't shine as bright as the twins, considering they are the mains.

But the story isn't just about Grace, Tippi and their story; it's also about their family situation and the relations and struggles that comes with being a family where the parents are constantly hoping their children will live another day and the younger ”healthy” sister is more or less forgotten about because they are so focused on the survival of those kids in need. It felt so raw and the only thing you wanted to do was fix everyone. Of course, it doesn't work that way, sadly.

The book is written in verse which is something I don't think I've read before but I will definitely try to read more of it after this; it was like discovering a whole new world of storytelling. It made reading this book feel like an exciting adventure in more ways than just about the story and its characters. ( )

Punched. In. The. Feels. ( )